General Training Reading — a timed set of three sections

The General Training Reading paper gives you 60 minutes for 40 questions across three sections of increasing difficulty, with no extra time at the end for transferring answers. The single most useful habit for that hour is not spending it evenly. This material practises exactly that: one sitting that runs through all three sections in order, 24 questions in all, with a suggested time printed at the top of each section — 8 minutes for Section 1, 10 for Section 2 and 15 for Section 3 — so that the easiest texts are done quickly and the longest one gets the time it needs.

Section 1 is two everyday texts: an island ferry's winter timetable, set out in two small tables with its fares and conditions, and a village hall's list of winter events. The eight questions are about scanning and conditions — which sailing does not run on a Sunday, what a family of four really pays when one child is under five, whether a visitor can get home after the quiz night. Section 2 is a kitchen's health-and-safety induction for new staff, seven short numbered rules; its eight questions test the rule and its exception — a near miss that must still be recorded, a fire alarm on a Tuesday that is not the test. Section 3 is a longer text on how the railways brought one standard time to Britain, from 1840 to the law of 1880; its eight questions include a heading, the writer's view of that law, a word in context and the conclusion.

Each section includes the inverted True/False/Not Given layout used throughout this category: four statements, and you pick the one never stated or the one contradicted.

This is a shorter set than the real paper — about 950 words of reading instead of 2,150 to 2,375, and 24 questions instead of 40 — so the suggested times add up to a little over half an hour, not an hour. It does not include the completion and short-answer tasks, which need written answers and are best practised on published sample material. Treat it as a rehearsal of pace and order: finish Section 1 well inside its time, and notice how much slower Section 3 is.

The ferry, the island, the hall and the kitchen are invented. The history in Section 3 is real in outline — the Great Western Railway adopted London time in 1840, railway time spread through the network in the following decade, and Greenwich Mean Time became the legal time in Great Britain in 1880 — and is told without invented figures. Twelve flashcards cover useful words from all three texts, from "foot passenger" and "near miss" to "an imposition" and "to bring about".

IELTS® is a registered trade mark of the British Council, IDP: IELTS Australia and Cambridge University Press & Assessment. This material is written by Zestly and is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.

• Spend less time on Section 1 and more on Section 3, following a suggested time for each
• Scan a timetable and a fares list for the one condition that changes the answer
• Apply a workplace rule together with its exception
• Follow a longer text's argument to the writer's conclusion
• Keep Not Given and False apart across three different kinds of text

Practice material written by Zestly, based on the ielts.org description of the General Training Reading test (60 minutes, 40 questions, three sections of increasing difficulty).